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There’s a comfort in metaphors. The gulf oil spill is or will soon be “Obama’s Katrina,” as if there was something heshould, or could, be doing. Maureen Dowd says that the problem is that:

“Oddly, the good father who wrote so poignantly about growing up without a daddy scorns the paternal aspect of the presidency.” (via Clive Crook)

Clive Crook remarks at The Atlantic that, “Apparently it’s a great idea to elect a president who is calm in a crisis, except when there’s a crisis,” noting that we’re all acting like little Malia Obama, waiting for daddy to put a Band-Aid on the Earth…or maybe a tourniquet.

Leadership — in government and in industries — is about more than giving comfort and simply being there. It’s about mobilizing people around solving problems and achieving a vision. Where there is a leadership crisis in the Gulf today isn’t that the government can’t convince people that it is doing everything it can to address the crisis, or that the President isn’t sufficiently comforting. It’s that there is no vision for addressing the crisis. Like in the wars of the past decade, we don’t know what success looks like — if it is even possible for us — that is, BP, the government and “humanity” — to cap the well, protect the coasts, and undo the damage that has been done.

But in many cases, leadership is a chicken and and egg question. Are leaders successful, or does success breed and create leaders? Can a leader mobilize people around a vision while the crisis bleeds — and no one knows how to apply the tourniquet? Or will having a solution confer the opportunity for someone to lead — and define their own vision of success?